The Alana Collection Masterpieces of Italian Painting

The Musée Jacquemart-André is focusing on the Alana collection, one of the most precious and little-known private collections of Renaissance art in the world, which is currently located in the United States. Echoing its exceptional collection of Italian art, the Musée Jacquemart André is holding an exhibition of more than seventy-five masterpieces by the greatest Italian masters, such as Lorenzo Monaco, Fra Angelico, Uccello, Lippi, Bellini, Carpaccio, Tintoretto, Veronese, Bronzino, and Gentileschi. 

Fra Filippo Lippi, (Florence, circa 1406 - Spoleto, 1469), St John the Evangelist, circa 1432-1434, Tempera and gold on panel, 42.8 x 32 cm, Alana Collection, Newark, DE, United States, Photo: © Allison Chipak.

This exhibition gives visitors a unique chance to admire for the first time pictures, sculptures, and objets d’art that have never been exhibited to the general public. 

The Musée Jacquemart-André was a model for collectors who, in turn, established collections that largely focused on the Italian Renaissance. The collection assembled by Édouard André and Nélie Jacquemart inspired the most prestigious American collectors, who built up considerable collections of works.

In keeping with the original aims of its founders, the Musée Jacquemart-André is presenting for the first time in the world a selection of masterpieces from the Alana collection.

Although art historians are familiar with the collection it remains unknown to the general pubic, because it has never been exhibited.

In the tradition of all the greatest American collections, the Alana collection is the fruit of a passion for art and an intensive selection process, adopted over several decades by Àlvaro Saieh and Ana Guzmán; the combination of the couple’s forenames make up the name of the Alana collection.

These masterpieces have been exceptionally loaned to the Musée Jacquemart-André due to the two collectors’ passion for this period of art. The exhibited works attest to the enduring taste for the Italian Renaissance, considered as a founding stone of Western civilisation. They provide a comprehensive overview of one of the greatest collections of private art, from thirteenth-century painting to Caravaggesque works.

CURATORSHIP
Carlo Falciani, an art historian, exhibition curator, and professor of the History of Modern Art at the Accademia di Belle Arte in Florence.

Pierre Curie, curator at the Musée Jacquemart-André and a specialist in seventeenth century Italian and Spanish painting.